JURAJ JAKUBISKO, The virtues of excess

05. 10. 2012

Few movie makers are as important to their country as Juraj Jakubisko, the most popular Slovakian director since the sixties. An exceptional witness of the events of his homeland, Jakubisko's peculiar view of reality creates an unconventional, poetic mix of magic, humour and mystery, a universe in which the grotesque and the sublime, the divine and the human co-exist in a baroque delirium. FICX celebrates the work of a master of European cinema with the first retrospective devoted to Juraj Jakubisko in Spain.

taken from http://en.fic.gijon.es/noticias/show/17272-juraj-jakubisko-the-virtues-of-excess

In 1967, when New Cinemas were being born, when winds of freedom began to blow in the Eastern Countries thanks to the loosening up of the Soviet grip, a young Slovak film maker, Juraj Jakubisko, released his first long feature, Crucial Years (Kristove roky, 1967). This imaginative and bittersweet autobiographical reflection prompted positive responses from critics and audience alike. The director's next film, The Deserter and the Nomads (Zbehovia a putnici, 1968), was selected to participate in the Mostra in Venice, and Jakubisko’s name began to be recognized as one of the most representative of the Czechoslovak Nova Vlná (New Wave). Among its members were Czechs such as Milos Forman, Jirí Menzel and Vera Chytilová, and Slovaks such as Štefan Uher, Ján Kádar and Juraj Herz. But that same fateful 1968, year of revolutions, Russian tanks put a final stop to the hope of “socialism with a human face” that had found its utopian capital in Prague. Under its banner rallied most of the Eastern European film makers. read more in el50, our newspaper

taken from http://en.fic.gijon.es/noticias/show/17272-juraj-jakubisko-the-virtues-of-excess